With Father’s Day coming up, we asked the Maggy from the fantastic ‘Red Ted Art’ blog, to come up with a unique craft project this Father’s Day. Over to you, Maggy…

”We love our dads! And there is nothing better than making dad something special for Father’s Day. This year it is all about turning Dad into a Masterpiece – we show you a great technique that allows ANYONE to “cartoonify” their Dad into a Roy Lichtenstein or Andy Warhol inspired piece of art! Once you have finished your artwork, print it on a mug, canvas or iPad case and make Father’s day special!

You will need:

 

• An A4 picture of dad – print this on normal paper
• A piece of plastic – such as an “old subject divider” or “overhead projector sheet” – anything plastic and clear that you can fid
• A marker pen
• A printer
• Pens or water colours of choice

How to Create your Father’s Day Art:

Begin by choosing a nice photo of Dad – preferably one, where you can see his whole face well – or JUST his profile. Choosing a photo was actually what took us the longest! Print it out in A4 size. We chose pictures of “us and dad” together.

Lay you plastic sheet on top and now carefully begin tracing around your father’s features.

 

• Top tips
  • The nose and mouth can make a picture look “funny”, keep these simple and don’t add too many lines – the nostrils often are quite enough.
  • Also draw what you SEE. My kids were tempted to draw “hair lines” in different directions as they IMAGINED the lines to go there, we stopped and traced only what we could see.
  • Keep it simple.. don’t try and too much detail… go round the face, the eyes, the hairline…
  • Finally, you don’t have to draw the whole of dad – it is enough to indicate the neck and outline of his shirt or t-shirt.

 

Now you have created your outline, print 4-5 copies onto white paper and start colouring. If your printer has a ‘copy’ feature, then you can copy the plastic sheet and print out. Alternatively, you could take a picture using your camera and upload to your computer, edit and then print out that way if necessary.

We decided to use watercolours, but you can use crayons, pens or paints. Have fun and be wacky! Remember Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein used wacky colours too.. And if you don’t like your colour scheme… print off some more and have another go!

Now you can either just use “the one” image to print onto your canvas or create a collage……

Photograph your pictures

You can now edit them in places like “Picmonkey” or if you want to create a collage for a personalised canvas print upload them directly to Photobox. Choose how you want your photos displayed – do you want just one image? Or a collage of four? Do you want four the same? Or alternate the kids work? The choice is yours!

 

We decided to create an alternating kids art colour bright mug and a canvas with a collage of the kids work alternating.

Enjoy!!!”

You can see more of Maggy’s craft ideas here

Thanks Maggy – what a colourful way to turn your Dad into a work of art! Would you try this out with your kids? Let us know in the comments below.